Transcript of Tory conference Islamophobia fringe event that provoked angry row

Over the last 24 hours, Conservatives have descended into a row over a fringe event on Islamophobia at the party conference.

Former Tory chair Sayeeda Warsi said she was “ashamed” of her party after comments emerged from the think tank event on “Challenging ‘Islamophobia’.”

The event, hosted by the think tank Policy Exchange, came amid a backdrop of dozens of Tory members reported to the party over allegations of Islamophobia – and allegations the party has not dealt with them quickly enough.

But to the anger of Baroness Warsi, large parts of the discussion were devoted not to discussing those allegations, but to extremists, and how Islamophobia should not be defined too tightly to avoid restricting free speech.

Two panellists defended Boris Johnson’s infamous comments comparing veil-wearing women to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”.

One panellist, Qanta Ahmed, said there should be no official definition of Islamophobia because it will “advance” the aims of Islamists.

At another point, a statement was read out saying the Christchurch mosque attack “would likely be inconceivable” if not for previous Islamist terror attacks.

The same statement claimed the “Western political and intellectual elite weaponise the term Islamophobia”.

Later in the discussion, when the panellists were asked about a Tory inquiry into Islamophobia, Ms Ahmed’s reply included comments on Islamism and “Muslim victimhood”.

Baroness Warsi also hit out at the event’s host, ex-Equality and Human Rights Commission chief Trevor Phillips, for joking that he’d been named “Islamophobe of the year”.

She tweeted: “Truly ashamed of my Party & fear for Muslims under this government.

“I feel sick to my stomach tonight to see the Party I chaired sink to such depths

“Where British Muslims have become a convenient scapegoat for populism, a butt of insulting language to increase poll ratings & an event on Islamophobia is an opportunity to demonise Muslims.”

Amid a backlash, the Tory Chancellor was questioned on the row – and the President of the National Union of Students announced she would no longer attend the Tory conference.

Zamzam Ibrahim told The Independent: “With hate crimes against Muslims soaring globally, such dangerous rhetoric being disseminated at the annual national conference of our governing party is simply abhorrent, and must be roundly condemned.”

Yet those who were on the panel hit back forcefully.

Policy Exchange said it was “completely wrong to suggest that any panellist at our event denied the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Peter Tatchell, the veteran campaigner, said: “Sickening to see Twitter mob denounce Trevor Phillips as an Islamophobe. At Tory fringe event, he condemned anti-Muslim prejudice & highlighted economic disadvantage suffered by Muslim people. He was made Islamophobe Of The Year by far right Islamists. That IS a joke.”

Amid the argument and fallout, what has been missing from the debate is an unvarnished account of what happened in the meeting.

The Mirror was in the audience, so we have decided to take the unusual step of publishing a transcript of what was said.

This is for transparency and to facilitate the debate. It is also because, as the claim and counter-claim suggest, the event was complex and multi-faceted, with different speakers taking different views.

Due to time constraints on our reporter, the below transcript is not of the entire event and does not include the final Q&A, but it does include the main sections and more than half an hour of the debate.

TREVOR PHILLIPS

[OPENING REMARKS, INCLUDING HIS BACK STORY]

The title of today’s session is perhaps slightly ambiguous. You might read it to ask the question, how do we challenge anti-Muslim prejudice?

Or you might read it to ask the question, should we be challenging the very concept of Islamophobia, as has been promulgated in various ways.

Or we might read it as some people might as a challenge to the Conservative Party in this context.

I’m happy that we take all those possibilities into account.

[GENERAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, INCLUDING PRAISING POLICY EXCHANGE, BEING A LABOUR MEMBER, PLIGHT OF PAKISTANI MUSLIMS IN UK, AND SCHOOL PROTESTS IN BIRMINGHAM].

I think this topic is so much more important than I think people often give it credit for.

Some months ago, about a year ago the BBC transmitted a piece from the Yemen which was about the taking of the Presidential palace. And in the course of that piece there was a group of rebels, Houthis, who were chanting in Arabic.

And there was a translation of this chanting which included the following phrases – ‘death to America’, ‘death to Israel’, ‘death to the Jews’, ‘victory to Islam’.

I asked various executives of the BBC why this particular phrase was translated because it had no particular relevance to the story. We then embarked on a 6 month correspondence in which today there’s not really answer to why the phrase ‘death to the Jews’ was translated.

And I will tell you what I think has happened here. That it was a mistake, a difficult mistake to make… the corporation finds it impossible to get into a conversation about this because it is anxious, extremely anxious about what it says and doesn’t say about a particular faith group and is extremely worried about being seen or accused of being Islamophobic.

In the context of the comedy we’ve seen from the BBC over the last two or three days over Naga Munchetty , I think there’s a much more serious issue here.

To what extent is the argument around Islamophobia already having an effect in silencing those who report our world?

As chair of Index on Censorship I can say that I think we are quite a long way and quite a damaging way down that road.

[TURNS TO PANEL]

NUS GHANI MP

I am a Muslim and a Conservative which the far right struggle with.

I’m also a feminist and a Conservative which the far left struggle left.

I’m also a Muslim and a feminist which the Islamists keep telling me cannot be true so they obviously are struggling with that as well.

So you can tell there are many many contradictions in who we choose to be and there are many contradictions in Islam.

But what we are afforded in this country is the opportunity to be multiple things because this country provides us the freedom to practise our faith in which way we wish to and also to express our concerns towards any faith, I hope, which way we choose to do so.

For me this explains why the definition or a definition of Islamophobia is always going to be complex and challenging.

But I hope when we have this discussion we can focus on the two things that are absolutely important.

One is focusing on the victims of anti-Muslim hate or abuse and the second is ensuring we continue to have the freedom of speech to criticise Islam as you would criticise any religion and also criticise extremists within Islam.

Because if they had their way I wouldn’t be sitting here at the top table speaking to you.

First of all I don’t think anybody here, I hope, would deny that Islamophobia, anti-Muslim abuse exists. But there would also be a huge amount of tension on what is Islamophobia and what is anti-Muslim abuse.

There are many conflicting ideas of what a Muslim is and what Islam is and there’s many conflicting ideas of who is allowed to be a Muslim and who is allowed to interpret Islam.

[DESCRIBING HER EXPERIENCE IN DETAIL]

So I accept that we somehow need to find a definition of Islamophobia but it’s going to be incredibly complex and challenging.

I know that the APPG on British Muslims came up with a version.

There are some very good elements in the report which they produced. But I don’t think they’ve quite got it right. There’s a couple of issues with the report that give me concern but also some very solid bits of research.

The sections on the women and equalities references on employment opportunities for Muslims in the UK.

And the section in particular on… a very merry Christmas which reflects how mainstream Muslims are in our country.

Because unfortunately we can come across stories in the press which showcase that Muslims have very extreme views on all issues but fundamentally most Muslims, like all of us on the top table and the audience here, are concerned about everything else like everybody else – when is the train going to run on time, how are we going to get our kids to school, what are the levels of crime in our community….

My biggest concern about identifying what Islamophobia is is that it will deny the opportunity to criticise Islam in debate.

And my concern is that we would end up conflating Islam with Muslims and communities and people.

And obviously people and communities and cultural practices is one thing, but not having the opportunity to criticise Islam is another.

When I was on the Home Affairs committee and we were taking evidence from a number of organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain I got a huge amount of abuse, as you do on social media, for asking them:

How many Shias were on their top table? How many women were in leadership positions? What about homosexuals or why was there no mosque in the UK that was run by a female Imam?

Where are the arguments for those sides of the discussion?

By opening up any sort of criticism you tend to get shut down. And I’m afraid that’s what people do when they want to control how their faith should be interpreted.When they want to control what happens in their communities. And they want to control who they believe should be the perfect interpretation of their faith.

So I don’t know how we get to a solution of identifying Islamophobia but I think we need to address how we can tackle anti-Muslim abuse.

I know a lot of work has already been done by government, all of you in this room will know enough, making sure these crimes are registered by the police and taken forward seriously, the fact there is an inquiry going forward into how we define Islamophobia.

But it provides me with a huge amount of anxiety that the way I would like to challenge Islam and extremists may be denied to me.

And if I as a Muslim woman feel those are concerns then we should all have a little bit of concern when we’re going down this route…

[TALKING ABOUT APPG AND DEFINITION OF ‘MUSLIMNESS’ IN REPORT].

PETER TATCHELL

I’d like to focus in my contribution on the All Party Parliamentary Group’s definition of Islamophobia.

I believe it was well-intended, it came from a good place, to protect Muslim people against hate crime, discrimination and so on.

But I think the definition they’ve come up with is worrying. It states ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism. And it is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslim-ness or perceived Muslim-ness.’

Now, I see three big problems with this definition.

Firstly, while it’s true that Islamophobia can be or indeed often is an expression of racism, it’s not ipso-facto racist because neither Islam nor Muslim people are a race. Islam is an idea, and Muslims include people from many different races.

Moreover, prejudice against Muslims can be driven by non-racist motives. It can be driven by for example a fear of Islamist extremism and terrorism, or by Christian or Jewish religious sectarians who have hatred of Muslims because they think they’re worshipping a false God.

So that’s the first problem.

The second is Muslimness is a very vague, subjective term. It’s not defined in the definition and we don’t know who gets to decide this.

Because Muslimness means many different things to different people. Even among Muslims themselves there’s no consensus. There are different sects of Islam – Sunni, Shia, Ahmadi, Sufi and so on – they can’t even agree among themselves.

So it is a contended understanding about what comes as Muslimness even among Muslim people.

Now of course there are some ultra-conservative and Islamist Muslims who claim to represent the true Muslimness. And they use it to justify their opposition for example to women’s rights and the rights of LGBT people.

The third concern about the definition is that it could be used to restrict free speech. The defenders of the definition dispute this, but the definition includes no robust caveat to protect freedom of expression.

And you would have thought that if they’re concerned about that, they would have included that kind of caveat.

Islam is an idea and like all ideas, including my own, it should be open to scrutiny and criticism. But as we know, very often critiques of Islam are denounced as an attack on Muslim people when they’re in fact an attack upon an idea. This is very unfair because in a free society it’s perfectly valid to criticise all ideas, including the idea of Islam or indeed any other belief system.

But what is not acceptable, and I concur with the previous speakers, what is not acceptable is to be prejudiced against Muslim people and to consequently victimise them.

Discrimination against ideas is perfectly reasonable in a free society. But not discrimination against people.

[BRIEF GAP IN RECORDING DUE TO EQUIPMENT FAILURE]

There are problems with this definition, and it’s tragic that the Liberal Democrats and Labour have jumped to endorse it without any qualification.

The definition is about virtue-signalling. It’s offering no concrete practical solutions to the very real prejudice, harassment, discrimination and hate crime that Muslim people face.

It’s [inaudible] ineffectual flawed definition that’s open to abuse.

And I would have thought that if Parliamentarians are concerned about protecting Muslim communities, and I would endorse that, far more effective would be to have new legislation to stop bigoted generalisations and incitements by sections of the press when they’re reporting Muslim issues.

Not to restrict free speech but to deal with really serious exaggerations or downright misrepresentations of the Muslim community by some of our press, which does fuel prejudice.

And also of course mandatory education in our schools to encourage religious toleration. Those two practical actions would be far more effective than this potentially dangerous definition. 

DR QANTA AHMED

I am speaking at the moment not as a physician but as a British Muslim, I’m also an American Muslim, and I have dedicated the last 10 years to writing in a stance combating Islamism.

I’m a believing Muslim, I observe Islam, but Islamism is its imposter.

So I vigorously oppose, in writing and in my speech, the concept of Islamophobia as it is being popularised in the mainstream, whether this side of the Atlantic or the other.

I want to commend the Conservative Party for even raising this discussion in a panel such as this.

Because there are many elements who are too afraid to speak about this for exactly the penalties they’re fearing.

Islamophobia has to be separated. I think everyone here myself included vehemently opposes anti-Muslim xenophobia.

The Christchurch massacres were anti-Muslim xenophobia.

Islamophobia, first mentioned in texts as far as I know in 1910, has been co-oped by 20th Century Islamists.

Post-revolutionary Iran revised the concept of Islamophobia as a political and judicial shield from the actions of Islamist individuals or institutions.

That means that criticism of Islamism carries huge penalties. There are Muslims who have lost their lives for opposing Islamism. One of the most famous a Pakistani governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who defended the right of a Christian woman in Pakistan to be not imprisoned on the basis of false charges of a false construct of blasphemy.

And his efforts, which he did as a believing Muslim with a conscience, he was executed for an action that was considered defamatory to Islam. That is a form of Islamophobia.

What happened to Salman Rushdie was the first sanctioned public event of Islamophobia.

So I want everyone who leaves this room to understand the word Islamophobia is a conflation of diabolical and absolutely intolerable anti-Muslim xenophobia, which every liberal democracy condemns and already criminalises in its hate crimes, with Islamism which eschews any legal or intellectual scrutiny.

Now if we cannot scrutinise Islam or Islamism we cannot defend not only a Christian woman in Pakistan but heterodox Muslims like us. We’re not non conforming, we believe in our faith, but we have a version of Islam that may not be acceptable to the mainstream industrialisation of Islamism.

I was born in London. My father pointed out a veiled woman to me in the early 70s because it was such a rarity to notice. The first time I saw my mother being ever asked to veil was as I was a child in Iran. Now we have veils in this room – very respectable, dignified ladies, they’re free to wear veils, some members of my family veil as well – but these external symbols of religiosity are being considered as the mainstream and only and dominant expression of Islam.

These symbols are used to delegitimise voices and arguments that come from someone who isn’t dressed in that manner.

Now we’re a free society. We can dress to the extent that anyone wishes. But the danger comes if we do not –

First of all I disagree with an official definition of Islamophobia at all.

I think it should be an intellectual and academic pursuit. I don’t think it should be adopted by legal or educational bodies. I think it’s extremely dangerous.

If we are going to adopt a definition, and I believe there’s an inquiry coming in the Conservative Party, be aware those individuals appointed to that inquiry are entrusted with enormous power and those persons will embody policy.

So you must be confident those persons in their beliefs will safeguard the values of the most vulnerable, most heterodox, most non conformist Muslim there is.

And restrictions of my freedom as a Muslim become restrictions of everyone’s freedom. Because you cannot oppose or contest an idea.

Now I write about these ideas both in the US and Britain and it is an incredibly perilous task even to write about these ideas, because there is a true risk, a true cost of what’s colloquially known as legal jihad.

Frivolous, baseless cases in order to silence or confine a journalist.

And we cannot have politicians embracing a poorly-defined term not knowing what they’re getting into, not being able to distinguish Islam, true Islam, from Islamism the imposter.

Islamism, monotheism, five simple tenets, that’s it.

Islamism is a 20th Century construct, a political totalitarianism.

Yet is being privileged in the US and maybe in the UK as a religious minority.

Islamism’s goal is fragmentation of society. The silo and the false construction that the Muslim is always besieged in society.

[REFERENCE TO PREVIOUS CONVERSATION]

I think what I want you to understand is a definition of Islamophobia is an instrument that will advance only the privileges of Islamists.

That is an instrumentalisation of Islamism in favour of that. So that an individual like me, who wants to protest that group as a Muslim, is now accused of Islamophobia and that is already happening.

We’ve already seen the dominance of this narrative in the US where we have our very first elected American Muslim women in Congress, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib… they are coming out with belligerently, baldly pro-Islamist ideas. You [Trevor Phillips] started [this event] with the clip of ‘death to Israel’ and ‘death to the Jews’ etc, so this construction that we have seen of anti-Semitism that is melded now in the Democratic Party and has not been challenged because if you challenge it, you’re an Islamophobe, this is how our President is often accused of, people are afraid to challenge it.

The issue is the idea does not have a race or a colour or a gender.

It is the idea that must be dismantled.

And if you fail to define Islamophobia accurately and if you fail to separate it from anti-Muslim xenophobia, you will fall prey to the rulebook, the playbook of the Islamists.

And you will have given over the command of the language in these critical debates to the Islamists.

And I advise you not to do that. 

TREVOR PHILLIPS

[THANKS THE SPEAKERS]

By the way, I speak – I don’t know if I’m the only one here who’s been nominated by a UN body as the Islamophobe of the Year. You might have been Peter, no? [LAUGHTER]

PETER TATCHELL

I’m jealous!

TREVOR PHILLIPS

I’m going to just very quickly ask each of you to comment on, because you raised a very specific thing and I wouldn’t want us to walk out of here with anybody saying we at Policy Exchange don’t want to confront important questions, and the issue of the government inquiry into what a definition might look like is important. And the question of whether the Conservative Party itself should have an investigation I think are important. So I might just ask each of you for 30 seconds on that in a moment.

But before I do that, we should have had a fourth panellist, Yahya Cholil Staquf, who is the general secretary of the Supreme Council of Indonesia.

Unfortunately those of you who follow these things will know there is rioting in Jakarta. He is the senior advisor to the President of Indonesia and obviously this was not a moment for him to leave. But he has sent us a statement and I should remind you all that the organisation he heads is the largest single Muslim organisation in the world. This is what he said.

YAHYA CHOLIL STAQUF (statement read by Trevor Phillips)

The continued targeting of Muslims in Muslim places of worship, as witnessed with the Christchurch and Finsbury Park attacks, comes after maybe two decades during which Islamist atrocities have been a pervasive feature of daily life around the world.

Horrors such as the massacre in New Zealand would likely be inconceivable if divorced from this wider context in which Islam has become synonymous with terror in the minds of many non-Muslims.

Among both Muslims and non-Muslims there is an urgent need to address those problematic elements of Islamic orthodoxy that underline the Islamist world view, fuelling violence on both sides.

The truth we must recognise is that jihadism can be traced to specific tenets of authoritative Islam and its historic practice.

This includes those portions of Sharia that promote Islamic supremacy and encourage enmity towards non-Muslims.

There is a desperate need for honest discussion of these matters.

This is why it worries me to see Western political and intellectual elite weaponise the term Islamophobia to short-circuit analysis of a complex phenomenon that threatens us all.

It is factually incorrect and counterproductive to define Islamophobia as ‘rooted in racism’ as proposed by the APPG on British Muslims.

In reality, it is the spread of Islamist extremism and terror that primarily contributes to the rise of Islamophobia throughout the non-Muslim world.

That is why it’s vital to challenge the ‘prevailing Muslim mindset’, which is predicated upon enmity and suspicion towards non-Muslims, and too often rationalises perpetrating violence in the name of Islam.

Otherwise, non-Muslims will continue to be radicalised by Islamist attacks. Stifling this much-needed debate with a flawed definition of Islamophobia will do nothing to make Muslims safer, but rather will contribute to an atmosphere in which divisions become more deeply felt, creating greater hostility and inevitably putting both Muslims and non-Muslims at ever greater risk.

Perpetually focusing attention outward, as seen in the endless call for an Islamophobia investigation into Britain’s governing party, only adds to the problem by distracting from the need for debate within and about Islam.

Jokes are not inherently Islamophobic or hateful. And this includes Boris Johnson ’s joke about the burqa.

Seeking to police what other people think and say is an authoritarian means of preventing free discussion, rather than an expression of compassion.

I commend Policy Exchange for hosting this event, I also commend those of goodwill of every faith and nation who seek to prevent the weaponisation of Islam for political purposes, and strive to find common ground on the basis of our shared identity as human beings, endowed with the right to freedom of opinion and expression. A right which includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, impart and receive information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

We know from afar your efforts to defend this key element of the humanist tradition, which is under siege by the forces of intolerance.

In today’s caustic political environment, it is both seductive and easy to hurl accusations, for example of Islamophobia, rather than present reasoned arguments concerning issues that are of the utmost importance to our respective societies.

Rather than vilify and/or silence those who disagree, let us choose compassion. Let us embrace humility. Let us be objective in our analysis of circumstances and events. And let us respect the right of others to think and speak freely, for God alone knows the truth of all things.

I believe this is the only way to restore trust and re-establish the bonds of affection that are essential if we are to acknowledge and embrace our shared humanity. 

TREVOR PHILLIPS

Our panelists, very briefly, the investigation. Do the Conservatives need an investigation – if so, what does it do?

PETER TATCHELL

Well certainly there’s been repeated accusations of anti-Muslim remarks by some Conservative officials.

Those do need investigation.

Of course we shouldn’t generalise – we shouldn’t say that all Conservatives are anti-Muslim. Not at all.

But there is a history of anti-Muslim remarks and playing to a prejudiced gallery by some Conservative Party members and supporters.

You can’t deal with the supporters but certainly with regard to the members and elected officials that needs to be investigated.

If the Conservative Party does stand for a diverse, pluralistic society where we’re all free and equal, I don’t think it can tolerate within its ranks those who have bigoted attitudes towards Muslims. Any more than it should tolerate those who have bigoted attitudes towards Jews, LGBT people, black and ethnic minorities.

NUS GHANI MP

The party has zero tolerance to all forms of abuse and that will extend to anti-Muslim abuse as well. It’s a membership organisation, people can sign up to the party just by logging on to the internet.

But the point is the present chairman and the previous chairman, the present PM and the previous PM, are absolutely focused on when cases come to light that they’re dealt with swiftly.

But if it’s a membership organisation people are going to join for various reasons from all sorts of backgrounds.

The point is that when abuse is brought to light, it has to be dealt with, and it has to be dealt with swiftly and it has to be dealt with within a process.

There’s bound to be some individuals that are going to challenge whether they should be removed and what they said is abusive at all. But we should crack on and deal with it.

[REPEATS POINT ABOUT ZERO TOLERANCE].

My slight concern is having dealt with the anti-Semitism inquiry on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which provided such woeful evidence from members of the Labour Party who were abused for being Jewish and had to give evidence behind closed doors. This is a parliamentary committee in the UK… A female Labour MP had to give evidence behind closed doors. One has now left to join the Lib Dems.

That is where a party is – institutionally anti-Semitic. And there’s nothing, there’s no crucial evidence, no quality you can point to to show that the Conservative Party treats Muslims in a similar fashion. It doesn’t do that.

This goes back to the question about Islamophobia. If people are going to take offence with everything people say or they potentially do or even challenge programmes like Prevent that are incredibly vital in keeping our young people safe… we are now entering very very dangerous waters.

The party’s absolutely focused when cases are brought to light that they deal with them. And those should be cases of any sort of abuse.

QANTA AHMED

I’m not qualified really to say what the Conservative Party should do internally. I’m not so informed on that.

I did defend the remarks of PM Boris Johnson, however ridiculous his satirical comparison was, because I felt that the adoption of the kind of dress he was speaking about, the niqab itself, is an objectification of womanhood and Muslim womanhood, which is marginal even in the most orthodox communities where I have lived and practised…

So I didn’t feel that was anything other than a joke, but I objected to his willingness to tolerate that garment in a liberal democratic society.

And what his statement made, not to debate the veil here, what it made apparent to me was the public discourse was completely dominated by this concept of Muslim victimhood.

And we are in the culture in the US now where victim chic is an aspiration. We’ve had a Hollywood actor of colour simulate his own hate crime for particular personal gains he imagined he would benefit from.

And Islamism preys on the portrayal of Muslims as victims while it ignores Muslim victims today – whether they’re Uighurs, whether they are Kashmiri people under siege, whether they are Kurds that are nationless.

Those victims never seem to garner powerful Islamist support, let alone the other victims of Islamism.

So I repudiate the concept of emboldening a group by telling it it’s victimised and it’s disadvantaged, independent of real economic and democratic facts.

… [TO NUS GHANI] You mentioned the inquiry into anti-Semitism… there is no intellectual or political or moral equivalence of Islamophobia with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a unique and genocidal, lethal hatred that has led to the world’s greatest crime against humanity.

Most definitely we’ve seen lethal anti-Muslim xenophobia in New Zealand and other places, which is appalling and unbearable.

But there is no equivalence.

And the danger, I warn you, if the Conservative Party plans to make an inquiry, the inquiry should be on anti-Muslim xenophobia. It should not be on Islamophobia because clearly people cannot grapple with the idea.

And we do not want to legitimise a status equivalence to anti-Semitism – that is extremely dangerous.

But that is exactly what Islamists in the OIC, in the UN, in positions of major power, are seeking. They are seeking through the OIC at the UN to make it an international crime and a human rights violation to scrutinise Islam. And that is devastating.

So if you have an inquiry in your party please make it about anti-Muslim xenophobia, and come to what judgement you may.